


Heavy Lifting

by SolarMorrigan



Category: DuckTales (Cartoon 2017)
Genre: Attraction, Let's go with that, M/M, Pre-Relationship, kind of?, this is ridiculous and I don't know how to tag it I'm sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-06
Updated: 2019-01-06
Packaged: 2019-10-05 16:03:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17328143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SolarMorrigan/pseuds/SolarMorrigan
Summary: Fenton is as helpful as ever; Gyro sort of wishes he wasn't.





	Heavy Lifting

**Author's Note:**

> Look, this made me laugh when I thought of it, but then I actually went and wrote it and now it exists and so I'm throwing it at the internet because what else is the internet for? If there's anything in here someone thinks I should actually put in the tags please let me know, because I'm legitimately not sure how to tag it...

Boxes of machine parts were heavy.

Gyro knew this. Every time he ordered new parts, he meant to invent some sort of machine that would lift and carry heavy boxes for him (of course, then he’d have to order parts for that machine, which would undoubtedly be heavy, and then where would he be?), but other projects always caught his attention and he never did get around to it.

And now, just like every time he ordered new parts, he was kicking himself.

“Manny!” Gyro barked, shoving at a box and budging it a rather sad foot across the floor. “Come move these parts!”

Gyro waited a few moments, but heard no answering clop of hooves. “Manny!” He called again. “Where _is_ he?”

“Dr. Gearloose?”

Gyro jumped at the unexpected voice, whirling around to find Cabrera standing in the doorway. “Cabrera! What are you doing here?”

“Uh,” Cabrera glanced around uncertainly. “Well, I got here about an hour ago when my shift started, and–”

“No, I mean – there, what are you doing right _there?_ ” Gyro snapped, jabbing a finger at the doorway. “Where’s Manny?”

“Oh! Manny took the day off, Dr. Gearloose. Remember? We were talking about it yesterday afternoon,” Cabrera replied, his usual cheerful certainty returning to him.

“Oh, yeah,” Gyro murmured; he did vaguely remember Manny and Cabrera talking about some sort of orchestra performance—or maybe it had been a rock concert? Gyro hadn’t fully been paying attention—and Manny requesting the day off did sound familiar now that Cabrera brought it up.

“But what did you need? Maybe I can help you!” Cabrera offered.

“I doubt it,” Gyro scoffed. “I need these boxes moved.”

Cabrera frowned, venturing further into the room. “I’m sure I can move a few boxes without issue, Dr. Gearloose.”

“I wouldn’t count on it. These are the new parts I ordered and they’re ridiculously heav–” Gyro broke off as, without preamble, Cabrera crouched down and picked the first box up off the floor. “–y. Uh.”

“Where did you need it, Dr. Gearloose?” Cabrera asked, voice only a little labored by the weight in his arms.

“Uh,” Gyro said again, blinking at Cabrera.

Well, that couldn’t be right.

Cabrera couldn’t possibly be that strong, could he? He was a weedy little lab assistant. Certainly, he was… rather broadly built, Gyro realized, gaze trailing across Cabrera’s shoulders. And had his forearms always looked so defined, perpetually bared by his rolled-up sleeves as they were?

“Dr. Gearloose?” Cabrera asked again, a bit more strained now.

“Over there!” Gyro blurted, coming from his stupor to jerk a finger at the far wall.

“Sure thing,” Cabrera grunted, hefting the box across the lab and towards where Gyro had pointed with little apparent difficulty.

As Cabrera leaned down to set the box against the wall, dusting his hands off with a huff and turning back for the next box, Gyro couldn’t help but stare. Something in his brain must have short circuited, because he was just standing there, watching his coworker lift another heavy box and cart it across the room, looking at the way his shirt stretched across his back to accommodate labor it wasn’t made for, wondering if Cabrera had always been this… fit.

Gyro felt like he would have noticed.

( _Would_ he have noticed?)

(Not that it mattered.)

(But then why couldn’t he stop _staring_?)

“Don’t stack them,” Gyro ordered, grasping for something to fill the sudden silence. “I want to be able to get into them later.”

“No problem, Dr. Gearloose,” Cabrera replied, dropping the second box carefully next to the first and rounding back for another. “You know, I’m not complaining or anything, I’m happy to help, but don’t we have a dolly around here? That seems like it would be practical, considering all the heavy things we end up needing to move.”

“We did have one at some point. I used it in a project,” Gyro said, deciding to train his eyes on the packages, rather than continue to be distracted by Cabrera’s… by Cabrera in general.

“What happened to it?” Cabrera asked, hefting the next package up.

Gyro shrugged, crossing his arms over his chest. “Rockets were involved. Last I saw, it was flying towards St. Canard.”

“Huh,” Cabrera’s thoughtful hum sounded a little breathless by now. “Well, thank goodness for Gizmoduck, then.”

“What?” Gyro snapped, finally looking back over at Cabrera in puzzlement at the non sequitur.

“You wouldn’t think so to look at it, but moving around with the suit can actually be quite a workout! There’s a lot of flex and movement involved, even if the suit is doing the heavy lifting,” Cabrera said, punctuating the statement by heaving the last box up off the floor. “And I started exercising, just to make it a little easier. And so I wouldn’t be caught unawares in case anything happened to render the suit unusable – not that I really expect that to happen, of course, but you know, any eventuality–”

“Wait a minute,” Gyro cut in as something occurred to him, “why didn’t you just put on the suit to move these boxes?”

Cabrera actually paused in his trek across the lab, box still cradled awkwardly in his arms, and let out a startled laugh after a moment of thought. “You know, it didn’t even occur to me!” He chuckled, moving to drop the last package next to the others. “I guess I just think of it as exclusively for superhero work now.”

Gyro rolled his eyes so hard he was almost surprised he didn’t break something. Of all the stupid– “Is there anything else I can help with Dr. Gearloose?”

Cabrera was looking at Gyro now, catching his breath and pushing his hair back out of his face and there was that pesky short circuit again.

The reboot came quickly, followed just as swiftly by the realization that– oh.

Oh _no_.

“No, that’s it!” Gyro declared, voice gone a bit pitchy. “Go away now!”

“Are you sure?” Cabrera asked, unfortunately no longer put off by the gaps in Gyro’s manners. “You look a little… distressed.”

Feeling the heat creeping up his neck and into his cheeks, Gyro realized he was probably flushed. And possibly making a weird face. “I’m _fine_ ,” he tried to keep his voice steady, doing his best to fight down tendrils of embarrassment and dismay. “Your help was adequate. Go back to whatever you were doing before.”

Cabrera was palpably hovering on the edge of arguing, ready to point out the signs of Gyro’s flusterment, but, in an act of rare universal mercy, decided not to. “Alright. Just call if you need anything else, I guess.” Cabrera said at last.

“I won’t need anything else,” Gyro said firmly, setting a frown in place just to be certain.

Gyro continued to stare as Cabrera nodded and left the main lab area to go back to – whatever it was he’d been doing before. His job, ostensibly. But Gyro was only staring to drive home the point that he was perfectly fine, thank you very much, and not just to watch Cabrera walk away because there was just _no way_ –

Oh, fine.

Gyro stared because he liked looking at the width of Cabrera’s shoulders and his arms beneath the rolled-up cuffs of his shirt and the dumb, floppy fall of hair on his head and because _he found Cabrera attractive._ God damn it.

Internally, Gyro allowed himself a moment to groan. This was going to make things awkward.

**Author's Note:**

> Also posted on [Tumblr](http://solarmorrigan.tumblr.com/post/181780748498/heavy-lifting-ducktales-2017-preish-fenro)
> 
> (If the link is bad, please let me know, my computer's acting weird at the moment and I can't actually access my blog properly to double check)


End file.
